This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(11)

CHAPTER 3

Back at the house I found Mo in the front room with Persephone. Mo was scratching the top of her head with the most bewildered look on her face as Persephone slid a large wooden table, plucked from one of the other rooms, into place.

Circe patted Mo on the arm. “You okay?”

Mo nodded but she was clearly not okay. I quickly wrapped my arms around her and she squeezed me tight. She brushed her fingers across my forehead and down the side of my face. “I love you.”

“I love you more.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Where you been, love?”

“In the garden,” I said.

Her teeth clicked together as she clenched her jaw. “I don’t even know if I can go back out there.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “It’s okay.” I leaned against her shoulder.

“I’m going to bring down all my research,” Circe said. “We can start by laying it all out. Retrace where we’ve been and figure out where we need to go next.”

She went to the mantel over the fireplace and ran her hand along the edge of the intricately carved wood. She pressed in one swirly arm of flourish, and there was a soft click. A narrow compartment, like a small drawer, fell open. Mo’s entire frame tensed up, and she pulled me back a step. From the hidden space, Circe took a small object. She dusted it off with her shirt.

“Are there any other secret compartments or hidden rooms I should know about?” I asked.

Circe touched her thumb to the tips of her fingers one at a time like she was counting in her head. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Yes. But we’ll talk about that later.”

She handed me the object she’d taken from the hidden drawer. It was a heavy pocket watch with a long silver chain. The faded engraving pressed into its dull golden face was familiar, the Colchis family crest—the three faces representing the goddess Hecate. Circe reached over and pressed a small button on the side, and it popped open. Inside was a series of interconnected silver rings with notches and grooves that all fit together perfectly against a backdrop of tiny painted moons in all its waning and waxing phases. Pointed golden arrows, like the hands of a clock, moved almost imperceptibly; the longest one had just moved past the illustration of the bright, full moon.

“It’s an astrological clock,” Circe said. “It tracks the cycles of the moon, the rotation of the planet on its axis. Hecate and the moon are inextricably linked. This device has been in the Colchis family for at least a hundred years, maybe longer. It can help us keep track of time. If we have a full cycle of the moon, then, according to this, we have about twenty-eight more days to find the last piece of the Heart.”

Persephone excused herself and came back a few moments later carrying a stack of books, papers, and a rolled-up map. She and Circe organized everything on the table.

“Do you have the parchment?” Persephone asked.

I realized she must have been talking about the crumbling document pressed between plastic I’d found in the secret office behind the fireplace in my room. I quickly went to my bag and took it out, carefully handing it over.

“Can I ask you something?” I said to Circe.

“Of course,” she said.

“Did you—did you steal this from the Vatican Archives?”

Persephone’s head snapped up. “You can’t really steal something if it belongs to you.”

“I mean, I’m on your side,” I said quickly. Persephone gave me an approving grin.

Circe handled the parchment as if it were made of glass, and I felt bad I’d shoved it in my bag like some old homework. “This document was taken from our family a very long time ago,” Circe continued. “It belongs to us. I wouldn’t say we stole it as much as we reclaimed it. How did you know it came from the archives?”

“Mo has a friend who used to be a curator at the Brooklyn Museum,” I said. “Dr. Kent. She sent me a picture of it. She’s the one who told me Medea was probably a real person.”

Something dark passed over Circe’s face. She looked worried. She exchanged glances with Persephone, whose expression was much harder to read.

Circe turned to Mo. “Could you put me in touch with this Dr. Kent?”

A little ripple of fear traced its way down my back. “She’s really nice,” I said. “Like, I didn’t tell her anything. I just asked some questions about Medea’s story, that’s all. I know y’all kept all of this within the family, but—” I pictured Marie in the cemetery—the carnage left in her wake. Persephone had the Heart’s power running through her, too, and I didn’t want to see Dr. Kent hurt because of something I might have said.

Circe smiled warmly. “It’s okay. I actually have some questions of my own, and if she was able to glean some truths from the pages, there might be some other things she can help me with.”

“Like what?” I asked.

She opened her mouth to speak when the doorbell rang. Mo went to answer it and returned a few seconds later with Nyx and Marie. Persephone had seemed distant, maybe even a little stiff, but she lit up when she saw Nyx. Nyx brushed Persephone’s braids behind her shoulder, then ran a hand over her own bald head.

“Cut it all off and be like me, Seph. Free yourself.”